SEO Struggles
-
Hey everyone,
I am a web programmer and have been fooling around with SEO for about a year now and just started to get pretty serious about it so I signed up for SEOmoz. We just launched our new site about 4 months ago (http://www.cincinnatiwebtec.com) and Google just started ranking us about a month ago. I believe we have done everything right with H1 tags, H2 tags, Title tags, alt tags, inbound links, url structure, etc. but yet we still can't even seem to get to the 1st or 2nd page of Google for "Cincinnati Web Design". I know it's going to be a competitive keyword because the people fighting for it are the SEO experts, but if you were to compare a person on page 2 or 3 to us, some of them have nothing to do with Cincinnati web design and I highly doubt they even bother with SEO, but yet they are ranked higher than us. i.e. http://www.hollandadvertising.com/ - the only place I see Cincinnati is the address at the bottom and they have only 30 inbound links according to yahoo. On top of that, they are an advertising firm, not a web design firm!
I was wondering if you guys would take a look at our site above and offer some suggestions. Do you think we are spreading the keywords too thin? I mean I just can't think of why a company like the Holland Advertising example above would rank higher than us. We clearly have a more SEO optimized site, more inbound links, more quality links, 0 errors, 0 warnings, etc. I am just at a loss. Hope you guys can help.
Thanks guys,
Chris
-
Very good info, thank you! So basically I imagine the more content we write the more pages will be indexed and the better ranking we will get on our keywords right? Does it matter whether this content is in the form of a blog? Or should we just create new pages for this? I will definitely look into the business directory's. Thanks again, Chris
-
Dan here from Path
First thought is it's just too soon to expect front page if your domain's less than a year old, your site only 4 months and just indexed a month ago.
Also I checked out Holland to see how you differ. Here's a quick rundown of why I think they're outranking you for now. (For inbound links I used SEOmoz's own Open Site Explorer)
They have around 374 pages indexed in google, your site has 30. Their site has been around since 2007. Yours less than a year.
You have more links but they have 3 times as many inbound domains. Your top inbound links appear to come mainly from client footers (quality sites but not relevant, link is the same on every page rather than being cited in the body content), while theirs come from business directories and pages that list web design firms in Cincinatti.
If I were you, my next moves would be:
1. Submit your business to a bunch of free (preferably Cincinatti-focused) business directories. Give the Whitespark Local Citation Finder a try to help you find relevant ones. A lot of people dislike free directories, and it's pretty old school but I think that local SEO is different in that regard. You see a lot of directories cited in Google Places. I bet between Whitespark and SEOmoz's Open Site Explorer you could get a list of plenty of these & you only have to do the run of them once, it's a rite of passage for local businesses IMO.
2. Get more relevant content up on your site... Case studies, relevant articles, start blogging. Just keep updating your website with relevant things. "7 Things Businesses in Cincinnati Need to Know About Web Design" and so forth. Take a bunch of tried and true principals and pitches and make them Cincinnati-focused.
I know it's pretty basic, nothing too exciting but I think there's a couple things that you could do right now and see return from.That and a little more time.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Improving SEO for a Niche Blog - Seeking Advice
I am a college student studying Information Sciences and was "hired" by my uncle over the summer to work and maintain his baseball-related website, which he started in 2016. His posts provide very in-depth information but were created without a focus on SEO. I've noticed that a competing site, which seems to have started as an e-commerce site, is ranking higher than my uncle's site for the query "how much does a baseball weigh." Interestingly, this competing site ranks for keywords like "mass of baseball," even though these exact keywords are not present in the post. Given the recent Google updates and changes in rankings, I'm trying to understand: How can an e-commerce site with seemingly less specific content outrank a detailed blog post?
Competitive Research | | sf9090
What strategies can I employ to improve the ranking of my uncle's site for this specific query?
Are there tools or methods I can use to analyze why the competitor is ranking higher and how to address it?
I recognize I am not well-versed in SEO, so any insights or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!0 -
Technorati - SEO Benefit?
Would listing my content / blogs on Technorati have an SEO benefit? A few months ago, I did a piece of analysis on our competitiors' link profiles and then ranked the linking root domains to get the highest scores. Technorati was one of the domains with a high domain authority and is also relevant to our business. On the other hand, I've seen on whiteboard Friday's that directories are losing their importance. My gut feeling is that this is something that is worth doing because it is easy to implement but that we shouldn't expect amazing returns in terms of traffic / page authority scores. Your opinions would be much appreciated 🙂
Competitive Research | | RG_SEO0 -
SEO Keyword Research
Hi, We are SEO beginners so please bear with us! We are trying to promote "Web based Invoicing Software". The SEO company we have signed with offer us 5 keywords for the package we are on with them. They have suggested\offered us: 1. Invoicing Software - Fine
Competitive Research | | Studio33
2. Online Invoicing - Fine
3. Online Invoicing Software - Covered by 1 and 2
4. Small Business Invoicing Software - Covered by 1
5. Invoice Template - Fine. Will Invoice templateS be covered on this one too? My question is does number 3 cover number 1,2 & 4 anyway? If so I am thinking to not go for 1,2, & 4 just keep 3 and choose three other new keywords. Would this be a better strategy and "more for our money?" Or, keep 1 and 2 and lose 3 and 4, would that be a good option. So, in summary options are (all assuming keeping number 5) 1. Keep all
2. Keep 1 & 2 - Lose 3 & 4
3. Keep 3 - Lose 1,2 & 4 4. Any other combo you can suggest? Any advice welcomed Thanks nutnut0 -
Will changing my domain name from a .co.uk to a .com affect my SEO?
Hi all, The .com for my domain name has become available (I am currently a .co.uk) so I am looking to move over my website to this but first would like double check if this would have any affect on my SEO at all? As a company we mainly target the middle east (Although based in the UK) but at the time of registering years ago the .com was not available. Do I have a 'history' logged with the current .co.uk domain or is my website solely dominated by the content? Also, if I do transfer what would be the easiest way of doing this just changing the DNS to a different location (will there be a duplicate content issue on both domain names?). Thanks in advance!!
Competitive Research | | starydynamo0 -
I must be tripping. How is this site ranking for the term "SEO Company"??????
When I go to Google non-custom search results and search the term: seo company The website "greencowseo.com" is ranked 3rd. OpenSiteSearch shows nothing. And get this... the domain was registered 14 days ago by somebody in Egypt. Do I need to quit my SEO Moz membership and hire this guy? 🙂
Competitive Research | | Bo-Jangles0 -
Raise your hand if you're doing SEO for manufacturers please.
When you're working for a manufacturer it's not exactly the same as working for a company that is flat-out informing people with content and links and revealing a lot of information (relatively speaking). Please tell me what you do when you're working with a client that is not willing to reveal too much because competition = fear of the unknown (like if you take a chance and post something online that your competition may use against you). I would appreciate less speculative and more informed answers from people who have actually done this kind of work - as opposed to those who think theoretically they may know the best way to go because they work for other types of businesses that are not as proprietary as manufacturing is. Thank you.
Competitive Research | | karlseidel0 -
How good really is Yahoo Directory Listing is on SEO optimization
I just god the approval from Yahoo Directory Listing today. How should I expect ranking increase just with that on google, yahoo and bing in the next couple of days ?
Competitive Research | | processia0 -
SEO Strategy Questions on an International Domain
I'm going to try not to get too wordy with my question. Any help that could be provided would be much appreciated! We recently purchased a Germany-based company. They were using two domains (possibly more) for their website. Domain1 and Domain2. I'm sure for duplicate content reasons, only Domain1 ranked well. We in the US wanted to use Domain2, as it contains the brand name and would add legitimacy to our website in the US. Problem is that they also wanted to use it in Germany. So we split it using GeoDNS. Any international traffic goes to their server. Any US/Canada traffic goes to ours. From what I've read, we in the US should have the advantage here in terms of getting our pages indexed on Google, because Google will crawl from the US. So to Google, it should be as if we've changed all of our URLs. The problem is that Google has not recognized these changes for our homepage and it has been about a month since I submitted a sitemap and changed our geo-targeting to the US in Webmaster tools. They've picked up other pages of ours, but the Title and Meta descriptions for the homepage are in German still. We also rank about 23rd for our own brand name. Bing and Yahoo have picked up the changes without issue and we rank 2nd for our brand name. My other issue is that the old distributor in the US (whom we have replaced) is ranking first for our brand name. I'm working on increasing our inbound links, but is there anything else I could be doing to jump ahead of them in the rankings? Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks!
Competitive Research | | KathleenLTG0